What types of elearning interactions will really engage your learners? Tireless campaigner for smarter instructional design Cathy Moore looks at how you can turn run-of-the-mill clicking into more memorable, challenging activities.

An Articulate user asked us a great question recently. She wanted to build an Articulate Quizmaker ‘09 quiz consisting of three paths, with each path containing a different group of scenario-related questions. Rather than make all of her learners complete all the questions, she wanted to let each learner choose just one of the paths at the beginning of the quiz.

Is it possible? Definitely! All it takes is some simple branching techniques in Quizmaker, and an unscored survey question at the beginning. Here’s how you can do it:

Elearning courses are mostly visual. When you build a course you have to have the right visual look to match your content. I like to think of it as creating a visually immersive experience where you’re trying to place the learner in the same space as the content.

Be the first to receive breaking news about the NHSFind out about new ideas for improving patient safetyListen to others talk about patient safety Follow experts and informative people to get information and learn from themExchange, discuss, and debating informationInform others yourself about your own news or guidance or toolsCollect information using surveysCreate movements amongst people with a shared causeFollowing a single story or topic, with links, for a period of time.

At Common Craft, we’ve learned a few things about stop motion video over the years. It’s how we make all of our videos. Yesterday I downloaded the new (and free) Vine app by Twitter, which allows you to capture and share up to 6 seconds of video at a time using an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Vine - the Twitter video app has got great potential in medical education. Here Common Craft show how it can be used to create stop motion vidoes. I've already seen one student have a go with this, could be useful for students developing learning resources on elearning SSCs.

A simple idea for developing an online resource. You could create something similar using an online whiteboard and recording your screen or using an iPad app such as ShowMe, ScreenChomp or Explain Everything. A video like this could also be incorporated into a more complex learning resource developed in a tool like Captivate or Articulate.

Be they enabling or terminal; cognitive, affective, or psychomotor; normative or summative; or behavioral, instructional, or performance objectives, no course is worthy without a host of statements that explain, sometimes in excruciating detail, what the student will be able to do after the instruction is completed. But are instructional objectives as valuable as we think they are?

If you are after images to use in learning and teaching the fear of copyright infringement can loom large. One way around this is to look for Creative Commons licensed resources. These are resources which someone has shared specifically for reuse with some rights reserved rather than the traditional 'all rights reserved' approach of copyright laws. Attribution is vital when it comes to using these in your work, but they're a brilliant source of images, music, video etc and can really add to the creativity of your curriculum. And we love a bit of creativity!

I like to think of traditional training as a wedding cake: a rich mix of the right ingredients to make a delicious creation perfect for the traditional wedding. But it is costly to make, it takes time to bake and rest. The care and expertise is needed for the decoration, the tiny sugar flowers will take days to fashion and not everyone may like it.

I like to think of blended learning like a collection of cup-cakes the more modern weddings have. They are bite-sized, can be a variety of different flavours and colours to match the event and the guests. They can even be personalised easily and added to quickly if more guests are attending.

Many people are stuck in the world of linear, click-and-read content. Sometimes it’s because that’s all the organization wants. And sometimes it’s because we’re not quite sure how to make something more interactive. It’s probably the subject I’m asked about the most. One of the most frequent questions I get. The cool thing is that regardless of the tools you use, you can still build interactive content.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.